He nods, eyes somber. I know he’s thinking of Esther, his sister.
We start out for the scattered remains of humans, hand-in-hand. This is what our life is now: looking through bodies for our family and friends, and always being on the run, trying to find a safe place for the surviving Untamed—a place that doesn’t exist. A place that can never exist.
I don’t even know where we’re going to go after this. The spirits won’t have us back in their temple.
The ground is wet and slightly squelchy underfoot. We go to each body together. If we can’t see the person’s face—but the build and coloring of the individual matches either Three or Esther—then one of us nudges the corpse over, until we can. I can’t help but notice no weapons have been left with the dead.
We keep doing this, over and over again. Five minutes. Ten. Twenty. Despite my earlier assertion that we should look quickly then leave, I know we’ll keep doing it until we’ve found who we’re looking for, or until we’ve checked every body. No matter how long it takes.
It’s rhythmic, really. A routine. But I haven’t actually thought about what we’re going to do when we’re confronted with their corpses. I don’t think Corin has either. It’s not something I want to think about. But I am, subconsciously. I imagine myself crying, falling down, fainting even? But it’s not happening now, and it doesn’t have to happen… I don’t want to find Three or Esther’s bodies. Yet I can’t leave without confirming their fates, without saying the Spirit Releasing Words over their bodies, making all the signs of the Journeying Gods and Goddesses over them. Because I know neither Three nor Esther could have survived that—not without the spirits’ help. And the spirits only took Corin and me to the temple.
After rolling over a particularly mutilated body with my foot—getting my only pair of shoes covered in congealed blood—Corin freezes. His face is ashen, and I follow his gaze.
Cold air wraps around me as I stare at the body.
It’s Corin.
It looks exactly like him. This man’s lying at an angle, his dark hair semi-obscuring a deep gash across his forehead. The red on his white, gaunt skin is blinding. I feel heat rising in my throat, and, after looking at the dead Corin’s open eyes—the mirrors are still bouncing light—I have to look away.
I squeeze Corin’s fingers tighter, appreciate the warmth of the man—the live man—next to me. “How?”
“They’ve cloned us all,” Corin says. He pinches the bridge of his nose. “I suppose we leave DNA in their towns when we’re raiding. Or it’s their appearance-altering augmenters… Temporary clones like Marouska was? Shit. This is messed up. Clones.” He shakes his head, and the early morning sun blinks in the flecks in his dark eyes. He looks down at the body. The body that’s modeled on him. “They’ve made us into their soldiers…made us attack us.”
For several minutes I can’t say anything. I don’t know what to say.
“Come on.” Corin pulls me forward. “It’s just another Enhanced.”
But it’s not. It’s him. That Enhanced is—or rather was—identical to him…and if I lose Corin, I don’t know what I’d do. The reality of our situation is terrifying. I don’t want to be on my own.
“If we find them, we’ll have to check their eyes. Check that they’re not actually the Enhanced copies of them.” Corin’s hand shakes as he speaks, and I hold onto him tighter, as though my life depends on it.
We carry on checking the bodies. Corin never lets go of my hand. I am glad.
Minutes pass. Then hours. I hadn’t realized how big the battleground was before. Or maybe the spirits have stretched it out, messed with the land. I turn back for a second, look for the spirit temple. It slices into the sky in the distance, so far away.
Corin squeezes my hand. We continue looking.
“Oh Gods.” The words escape from my mouth before I can stop them. My eyes are already trying to examine the body in the distance… Female… Short, cropped, dark hair… A muscular build, like Corin’s.
“Sev?” Corin’s hand tenses, all the muscles in his fingers going rigid against mine.
Then we’re running.
It could just be a clone. It could just be a clone. It could just be a clone.
The mantra’s shouting itself over and over again in my head.
But the closer I get to the body, the more sure I am. My spine tingles, my heart pounds. I can hardly breathe.
The young woman’s lying on her side, her back to us. Dirt and grime and dried blood cover her pale skin. Her arm twitches. She’s…she’s not….
We reach her a second later. Untamed eyes. My neck clicks.
Esther. She’s alive. She’s still alive. Hope erupts from within me. If she is, then surely—
No. I saw my brother get shot. He’s dead. We’re not going to find him alive. We’ll be lucky to find his body intact.
“Esther…” Corin says. His voice is strange, too quiet.
Then he throws himself down at his sister’s side. I step around him and look down at her. Dark eyes, like warm chocolate—just like Corin’s—watch me. There’s still life in them—Untamed life. I know it’s her—my Seer powers tell me that—but she’s weak. Her face is divided in two by a long, bloody gash. Her skin’s too pale. Far too pale and—
I choke as I see the bullet in her shoulder—a harsh glimpse of metal among torn muscle, bloodied tissues, shredded skin.
Bile rises in my throat. I bite my lip, look around. There are other bodies not far off; I don’t recognize them.
Esther makes a gurgling sound as she rolls over onto her back with a blood-curdling scream. She looks at us, and I watch her absorb Corin’s appearance, noting the obvious relief on her face, the way her shoulders sag slightly into the muddy ground. Then her face moves a fraction, until she’s looking at me, and—
I know what she’s going to say. I don’t know how. But I know.
“No.” I look at her, shake my head. “No… No, Esther, no.”
Her eyes are on me, and she nods.
But she can’t say those words, she mustn’t. I clench my fists, feel the blood vessels over the back of my hand bump up.
I don’t want her to speak. Esther can’t say the words. It’s impossible.
Blood drips down the side of her face. Corin tears part of his shirt off, tries to dab all the redness away, but the fabric soaks up the blood until it’s bleeding itself.
Esther’s lips start moving, and her eyes are still on me. “Seven, please, he’s alive—”
I shake my head. He can’t be. Half his face was shot off, and another bullet went into his abdomen. My brother’s tough, but there’s no way he could have survived that.
“He is alive.” Esther shuts her eyes briefly, and her whole body shudders. When she opens them, I feel sick. “He was still breathing, Seven. I saw him, but—”
My spine clicks. Something strange happens to my legs, and I fall as she speaks.
“They’ve taken him. The Enhanced Ones have taken Three.”
Corin grabs me as I fall.
But his arms aren’t as strong as normal, and he can’t stop me from meeting the ground. For a second, he tries to pull me up—his hands under my arms—but then Esther lets out a jagged gasp. Corin lets go of me, turns to her, and I crash into the mud for a second time.
Soft, too soft.
The sludge grabs me. It takes my feet first. I watch as it rises up over my legs, seeping into my shorts. It feels cold, like a spirit’s clinging to me.
The Enhanced Ones have taken Three….
No.
My belt digs into me, sharp and hard. I stare at my long shorts. Can’t even remember what color they’re supposed to be. Navy? Black? Khaki? They’ll be a neutral color, I know that. But they’re just brown now. Dirty brown. My only pair. Ruined. And it seems important, I can’t look away from them.
My shirt is the same—an oversized T-shirt, marred with mud stains and fresh dirt. My…jacket? I’m not wearing one. I frown, thought I had one on b
efore…in the battle? I can’t think. My head hurts too much. My arms are bare, and I can see the new mud on them.
I’m covered. Covered in squelchy clay and dirt, and it’s already drying—too quickly. Far too quickly. The spirits. It’s got to be them. They’re out here now—mostly invisible—and they’re still active.
I look at Esther: alive, but with a bullet in her shoulder. The spirits must have been protecting her too, out here; she’s not dead.
I take a deep breath, peel a layer of nearly dry sludge from my skin. Sharp pins dive through me.
“Seven, it’s true,” Esther says. Her voice is weak. She sounds like how my sister did when she got tonsillitis a few years ago: raspy, annoyed, tired. “I saw Three. He’s alive, they’ve taken him—”
“No.” I shake my head, pull more dried mud from my arm, wince as the tiny hairs there protest. “He’s dead.” I flinch as I bite the words, as if just by saying it I’m ensuring my brother’s gone.
But I saw his face, I saw the gap where his left cheek should’ve been. I saw the blood, the mangled mess of tissues and flesh, the wild look in his eye—fear.
And I saw the second bullet plunge into his abdomen.
Nausea rises within me, and I struggle not to smell the putrid aroma of death. My hands splay out in the mud. I watch the gloopiness ooze between my fingers, over my nails. It reminds me of something, but I can’t think what.
“Seven,” Esther says, but I shake my head.
“They’ve copied us, cloned us,” Corin says. He’s crouching, and his back is turned. He’s fiddling with the piece of fabric again, trying to adjust it so it’s tighter around Esther’s shoulder.
“And they’ve got appearance-altering augmenters,” I say. “It wasn’t Three you saw breathing.” I nod. “Come on. We have to find his body, send him off.”
“Seven, please… You have to go after him, after them.”
My chest shudders.
Corin flicks his head toward me, his eyes dark. The wind starts to pick up, and the tattered front of his shirt flutters. “Could Three be alive?”
My shoulders tighten. I shake my head as a rush of something flies past me—I feel the movement against my back. A spirit.
“He is alive!” Esther’s voice gets higher. “He is! I saw him… Seven, you have to go after him. Our village rescued you when the Enhanced took you to their compound, but you’re not going to do the same? We always rescue each other. It was him—he was shouting your name—Seven, not Shania. Your Untamed name—it was him.”
“The Marouska-imposter called me Seven too.”
“But—”
I bolt upright, stand over them both. My fingers are burning shards. The wind wraps around me, along with remnants of rain. My clothes feel heavy.
“Esther,” Corin says. “Leave it.”
He takes out a lighter and a box of cigarettes from his pocket. I stare at him as he struggles to light one. We’ve just fought the Enhanced Ones, battled against and with spirits as they first fed from us, then helped us, had our numbers slashed and lost all our gear, and Corin’s still got cigarettes with him.
Esther makes a gurgling sound. Her eyes start to water. With a jolt, I realize she’s been shot in the same place I was, only…a month ago? Was it a month? I pull at my hair, then push it behind my ears. My arm tingles. After I got shot, Three checked my shoulder and said the bullet had missed the important stuff. It doesn’t look like Esther’s has.
I rub my nails up my arm, need to get rid of the dirt. Need to get clean. I look around, but there’s no water. The land’s just moorland, hilly, muddy. I can’t see any valleys with water at the bottom.
I brush down my shorts.
“Khaki,” I say.
“What?” Corin gives me a strange look.
I point at my shorts. “They were khaki.”
Corin looks around. His lips are now pressed together so firmly the color’s draining from them, and he holds the half-burnt cigarette between his thumb and forefinger. A trail of smoke lifts up toward the sky.
Corin coughs. “We need to get the bullet out.”
Esther groans, her face paling. I thought she’d looked bad before, but now her skin has an eerie gray pallor. The exact same shade Kayden’s face had been when he died. No. When he was murdered.
“Not here,” I say. There isn’t any cover. Just grass and mud and the odd bit of bracken. We need to get away, find somewhere we can hide, in case they come back. “We’re too vulnerable here.”
The Enhanced Ones have taken Three….
I gulp, a sour taste in my mouth. No, they haven’t taken him. His body will still be here. Somewhere.
“Corin, get Esther away from here. I’ll catch up.” I turn away, look back out toward the other corpses.
“Sev, what are you doing?” Corin’s voice is dark.
I flinch a little. “I need to keep looking, find his body. Three’s body. The Spirit Releasing Words. They need to be said.”
Especially when Death is around.
I shudder at the thought of seeing Death again—that cloaked man with glowing elbows. My mouth dries. The wind whistles past my teeth, makes an eerie shrieking sound. The memory feels almost like a dream, as if it can’t possibly have happened. But it did. I saw Death, and he was angry because I was going to join the Enhanced. Because he knew I was a traitor.
The mask of betrayal hangs over your aura, like gold cobwebs rusting.
I duck my head a little. Water pours down the back of my neck, down my spine.
The day of your death is marked to end the suffering, but it is not today. A traitor’s soul is never free. A traitor’s soul is Death’s soul. Remember that. Death will collect what belongs to Death. Death will not forget.
I swallow hard, don’t want to think about my demise.
I rock my weight on the balls of my feet, look around again. Three. I need to concentrate on my brother. I’ll find his body, send him off properly, make sure his soul gets to the New World. So long as I’m in time….
And the dog… My terrier… He’ll be out here somewhere… I can find him too. Dead or alive. I gulp.
“Sev! It’s too dangerous,” Corin shouts after me as I head off.
I see him out of the corner of my eye, but he’s not getting up; he won’t leave Esther. I know that.
“I won’t be long.” I hug my arms to me. “Head north. I’ll catch up.”
I’m not sure why I say that. I don’t know which way is north—or which way we should be going. There’s nothing obvious in any direction, except for the spirit temple. Ahead and to the left, it towers, on its tor. We’ve come a long way down the slope, yet I… I almost don’t remember moving… Everything’s a surging blur.
Spirits, got to be spirits. They’re still messing with my head. I can’t even recall which way we came from to get here in the first place. Everything’s just fading together, even the battle with the Enhanced Ones.
I hunker down as I walk, the rain gets heavier again. My clothes are sodden rags, molded to my body. My skin burns under them. Murky, dark water pools on the ground, between bodies that are the wrong size for Three. I splash through it, running now. Running fast. I concentrate on my breathing. Years of raiding on foot—and good genes—has made me an expert long distance runner. I know I can do this.
The terrain gets steeper, the water-laden grass is slippery. There are fewer bodies to check here. I power on, and then I stop, realize where I am. It’s the place, the place where Raleigh—the leader of the Enhanced Ones—tortured me. I was here, lying right in this spot—
My stomach twists. My eyes narrow.
No… No… No….
I peer through the rain, harder. The roof of my mouth tastes funny. I double-check where I am.
Oh Gods.
His body’s not here.
Raleigh’s body is not here.
But it should be. Corin stabbed him. Right here, this bit of grass. I heard the knife go into his chest. Heard Raleigh’s last bre
ath as it dragged on and on.
But Raleigh’s body isn’t here.
There’s no one here, not on this mound.
I check again; my heart rate gets faster. But I can feel that is the place where Corin stabbed Raleigh, the place where Raleigh tortured me with his Seer powers.
Oh Gods. He’s not… He survived the stabbing? I shake my head. His body’s not here.
And all the other bodies are still here. The dead bodies. The live Enhanced Ones have all gone. My mother has, because she wasn’t shot dead, just injured. I turn, look back to the right, to the place where Corin shot her—yes, she’s gone. She’s alive.
And Raleigh’s gone too. A clue that he also survived?
My chest rises and falls. I clutch my Seer pendant until my knuckles burn. Still, it doesn’t mean anything. I tell myself that, over and over again. Raleigh’s their leader—they’ve probably carried his body back for a proper ceremony. That will be it. I nod.
I bite my lip, take a deep breath. I have to keep going. Need to find Three’s body. Have to say the Spirit Releasing Words, call on all the Journeying Gods and Goddess, before it’s too late.
But the earlier adrenaline and momentum’s gone. I’m wobbly. My ankles feel soft, insubstantial. Like they’re not mine. Someone else’s. Still, I keep going. My brother’s body needs sending off properly, if it’s not already too late for him to safely reach the New World.
After a few minutes, the rain begins to lessen again, until it’s just a patter on the back of my neck. Doesn’t make much difference though, I’m already soaked.
I jump over one ditch, then nearly trip over another body.
That’s when I see her.
She’s straight ahead of me, leaning over bodies. My eyes narrow. Dark hair, dark skin—
My breath catches in my throat.
No.
I slow down, then stop. I watch as the woman lifts one arm up, pushes her hair back behind her ears, then turns to the next body. She’s doing the same thing Corin and I were. Looking for survivors.
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